tosteveschmidt,who's a senior adviser to the mccain/palin campaign in 2008. watching this as a republican, steve, i will just say in the room here us all watching together we were all much more riveted than we were last week during the presidential debate. what's your overall reaction with how the guys kid tonigdid ? >> it's a fiery debate. i can't remember a debate that's been as fiery as this one at this level. i think republicans will watch this. they will say paul ryan won. >> really? >> they'll be happy with this performance. i think democrats who watched this will be fired up about joe biden's performance. i think he did what he needed to do tonight which is to calm some of the panic in the democratic base by having a fiery performance. but i also think this -- his smiling, the laughing, the grinning, if you look at the recent history of debates, whether it's al gore sighing, president george herbert walker bush looking at his watch, so many of these debates have come to be dominated by these personality quirks that manifested themselves over the course of the d

in light of what was the last week in denver?>>steve, ithink he touched on the biggest reason why this debate could be more important than these under cards typically are. that is because there is pressure on joe biden to stand and deliver, and to change the narrative from what we've had the last few days. which is a fact given president obama's weak performance in denver, that mitt romney for the first time it seemed a real bump in the polls, and in some states is polling narrowly ahead. so i think biden will try to turn that around, put paul ryan and the gop ticket back on the defensive and at the same time the burden is on trying to keep the mojo going, keep romney's sort of balance here a life released a few more days until the president and mitt romney face off again next week. so i think that's the biggest reason why this thing matters. also one important point and that is this is one of the first perhaps the only campaign where one side is really campaigning against the policies of the other parties vice president as much as they're running against the other party's preside